Disconnective action: Online activism against a corporate sponsorship at WorldPride 2021

Abstract

Disconnective action, this article argues, is an important supplement to the logic of connective action, which enables social movements to organize informally online. Through the (threat of) disconnection, members may (re)assert their agency in relation to social movement organizations. In conducting a case study of LGBTI+ community members’ protests of a corporate sponsorship of WorldPride 2021, we establish disconnective action as a particular form of within-movement activism that relies both on social media affordances and the conditions of possibility of hybrid media ecologies. Thus, we explore how individual members of the LGBTI+ community were able to influence the formal organization of WorldPride 2021, as the threat of community members’ disconnection from the event led the organizers to terminate a corporate sponsorship. On this basis, we conceptualize disconnective action as a central means for individual activists to shape the movements of which they are part.